A large and growing population of users enjoys entertainment through the consumption of media items, including electronic media, such as electronic books (also referred to herein as ebooks), electronic newspapers, electronic magazines, and other electronic reading material. Users employ various electronic devices to consume such publications or media items. Among these electronic devices are electronic book readers, cellular telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), portable media players, tablet computers, electronic pads, netbooks, desktop computers, notebook computers, and the like.
Comics are a popular type of media item or publication which may be viewed or consumed using these electronic devices. Comics are generally narrative artwork (e.g., artwork or pictures which contain text or narrative) which use multiple panels (e.g., comic panels) to portray scenes, events, storylines, etc. Each page of a comic may include one or more panels (e.g., enclosed regions). The panels may have various shapes (e.g., geometric shapes or irregular shapes) and each page may have a different layout of panels (e.g., each page may have a different number of panels arranged in different ways). The panels often include pictures or images, and may also include text accompanying the pictures or images. Comics often include dialog which are generally included in word balloons, as well as brief descriptive prose. The panels of a comic may be read in a specific order (e.g., from top to bottom and left to right) and may illustrate or narrate one or more storylines. A comic may generally refer to any medium which uses panels having one or more of text and images, to convey information such as a storyline. Comics may include many different styles and genres including, but not limited to, comic books, comic strips, manga (e.g., Japanese style comics), manhwa (e.g., Korean style comics), web comics (e.g., online comics or comics published on the internet), graphic novels, etc. Comics may be presented on electronic devices in the form of digital images (e.g., Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) images, bitmaps (BMPs), Portable Network Graphics (PNG) images, Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) images, etc.), or in other formats such as the Portable Document Format (PDF) and the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) format, etc. Traditionally, users may browse or navigate through a comic on a page by page basis.